This book considers the syntax of the left periphery of clauses in relation to the extra‐sentential context. The prevailing point of view, in the literature in this field is that the external context ...
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This book considers the syntax of the left periphery of clauses in relation to the extra‐sentential context. The prevailing point of view, in the literature in this field is that the external context does not intervene at all in the syntax of the sentence, and that the interaction between sentence and context takes place post‐syntactically. This monograph challenges this view and proposes that reference to indexicality is syntactically encoded in the left‐most position of the clause, where the speaker's temporal and spatial location is represented. To support this hypothesis, it analyses various kinds of temporal dependencies in embedded clauses, such as indicative versus subjunctive, and proposes a new analysis of the imperfect and the future‐in‐the‐past. The book also compares languages such as Italian and English with languages which have different properties of temporal interpretation, such as Chinese. Finally, analysis of the literary style known as Free Indirect Discourse also supports the hypothesis, showing that it may have a wide range of consequences.Less

About the Speaker : Towards a Syntax of Indexicality

Alessandra Giorgi

Published in print: 2009-12-17

This book considers the syntax of the left periphery of clauses in relation to the extra‐sentential context. The prevailing point of view, in the literature in this field is that the external context does not intervene at all in the syntax of the sentence, and that the interaction between sentence and context takes place post‐syntactically. This monograph challenges this view and proposes that reference to indexicality is syntactically encoded in the left‐most position of the clause, where the speaker's temporal and spatial location is represented. To support this hypothesis, it analyses various kinds of temporal dependencies in embedded clauses, such as indicative versus subjunctive, and proposes a new analysis of the imperfect and the future‐in‐the‐past. The book also compares languages such as Italian and English with languages which have different properties of temporal interpretation, such as Chinese. Finally, analysis of the literary style known as Free Indirect Discourse also supports the hypothesis, showing that it may have a wide range of consequences.

Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and ...
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Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and “being accountable”—has been of longstanding interest in terms of how interactants in both ordinary and organizational contexts manage their image or reputation, as well as how they achieve mutual understanding. However, these concepts are polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic, such as accountability as “moral responsibility” and accountability as “intelligibility.” Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars, which has arguably slowed the development of these concepts. This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing accountability, with the goal of re-exposing its multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing new pathways for future research. Chapters advance our understanding of central theoretical issues, including turn taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, membership categorization, action formation and ascription, social solidarity and affiliation, and the relevance of context. Chapters range contextually, canvassing interactions between friends and family members, and during talk shows, broadcast news interviews, airline reservations, and medical visits. Chapters also range culturally, including English, Japanese, and Korean data.Less

Accountability in Social Interaction

Published in print: 2016-07-01

Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and “being accountable”—has been of longstanding interest in terms of how interactants in both ordinary and organizational contexts manage their image or reputation, as well as how they achieve mutual understanding. However, these concepts are polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic, such as accountability as “moral responsibility” and accountability as “intelligibility.” Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars, which has arguably slowed the development of these concepts. This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing accountability, with the goal of re-exposing its multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing new pathways for future research. Chapters advance our understanding of central theoretical issues, including turn taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, membership categorization, action formation and ascription, social solidarity and affiliation, and the relevance of context. Chapters range contextually, canvassing interactions between friends and family members, and during talk shows, broadcast news interviews, airline reservations, and medical visits. Chapters also range culturally, including English, Japanese, and Korean data.

This pioneering study is based on an analysis of over 200 languages, including African, Amerindian, Australian, Austronesian, Indo-European and Eurasian (Altaic, Caucasian, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, ...
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This pioneering study is based on an analysis of over 200 languages, including African, Amerindian, Australian, Austronesian, Indo-European and Eurasian (Altaic, Caucasian, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Dravidian, Uralic), Papuan, and Sino-Tibetan. Adpositions are an almost universal part of speech. English has prepositions; some languages, such as Japanese, have postpositions; others have both; and yet others, kinds that are not quite either. As grammatical tools they mark the relationship between two parts of a sentence: characteristically one element governs a noun or noun-like word or phrase while the other functions as a predicate. From the syntactic point of view, the complement of an adposition depends on a head: in this last sentence, for example, a head is the complement of on while on a head depends on depends, and on is the marker of this dependency. Adpositions lie at the core of the grammar of most languages, their usefulness making them recurrent in everyday speech and writing. The author examines their morphological features, syntactic functions, and semantic and cognitive properties. He does so for the subsets both of adpositions that express the relations of agent, patient, and beneficiary, and of those which mark space, time, accompaniment, or instrument. Adpositions often govern case and are sometimes gradually grammaticalized into case. The author considers the whole set of function markers, including case, which appear as adpositions and, in doing so, throws light on processes of morphological and syntactic change in different languages and language families.Less

Adpositions

Claude Hagège

Published in print: 2010-04-29

This pioneering study is based on an analysis of over 200 languages, including African, Amerindian, Australian, Austronesian, Indo-European and Eurasian (Altaic, Caucasian, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Dravidian, Uralic), Papuan, and Sino-Tibetan. Adpositions are an almost universal part of speech. English has prepositions; some languages, such as Japanese, have postpositions; others have both; and yet others, kinds that are not quite either. As grammatical tools they mark the relationship between two parts of a sentence: characteristically one element governs a noun or noun-like word or phrase while the other functions as a predicate. From the syntactic point of view, the complement of an adposition depends on a head: in this last sentence, for example, a head is the complement of on while on a head depends on depends, and on is the marker of this dependency. Adpositions lie at the core of the grammar of most languages, their usefulness making them recurrent in everyday speech and writing. The author examines their morphological features, syntactic functions, and semantic and cognitive properties. He does so for the subsets both of adpositions that express the relations of agent, patient, and beneficiary, and of those which mark space, time, accompaniment, or instrument. Adpositions often govern case and are sometimes gradually grammaticalized into case. The author considers the whole set of function markers, including case, which appear as adpositions and, in doing so, throws light on processes of morphological and syntactic change in different languages and language families.

This book uses the cartographic theory to examine the left periphery of the English clause and compare it to the left-peripheral structures of other languages. The book argues that the dissimilar ...
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This book uses the cartographic theory to examine the left periphery of the English clause and compare it to the left-peripheral structures of other languages. The book argues that the dissimilar surface characteristics of these languages (primarily English and Romance, but also Gungbe, Hungarian, Hebrew, Dutch, and others) can be explained by universal constraints, and that the same structures apply across the languages. The book focuses on main clause transformations—movement operations that can only take place in main clauses.Less

Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and the Composition of the Left Periphery : The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 8

Liliane Haegeman

Published in print: 2012-10-10

This book uses the cartographic theory to examine the left periphery of the English clause and compare it to the left-peripheral structures of other languages. The book argues that the dissimilar surface characteristics of these languages (primarily English and Romance, but also Gungbe, Hungarian, Hebrew, Dutch, and others) can be explained by universal constraints, and that the same structures apply across the languages. The book focuses on main clause transformations—movement operations that can only take place in main clauses.

This volume advances our understanding of how word structure in terms of affix ordering is organized in the languages of the world. Affix ordering is a central issue in linguistic theory and there ...
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This volume advances our understanding of how word structure in terms of affix ordering is organized in the languages of the world. Affix ordering is a central issue in linguistic theory and there has been much research on the topic. The present volume contributes novel data from typologically diverse well-studied and lesser-studied languages as well as original analyses, and covers the major approaches in the field. Unlike previous research, most of the contributions in this collection consider more than one language. Discussed are, among other things, cases of affix ordering that pose problems to linguistic theory such as affix repetition, variable ordering, and interaction of prefixes and suffixes in terms of parasynthesis and mobile affixation. Novel examples of affix repetition and variable ordering are given, and the volume provides evidence that these phenomena are neither rare nor typical only of lesser-studied languages with unstable grammatical organization, as has been claimed in the literature so far. This book also offers an explicit discussion on the (non)existence of phonological affix ordering and a discussion on the emergence of affix ordering in child language, the first of its kind in the literature. Repetitive operations that are hard to explain in many theories are frequent in early child language and seem to serve as trainings for morphological (de)composition and affix stacking. Thus, the volume also raises the question about the general architecture of grammar and the nature and the side effects of our theoretical assumptions.Less

Affix Ordering Across Languages and Frameworks

Published in print: 2015-01-06

This volume advances our understanding of how word structure in terms of affix ordering is organized in the languages of the world. Affix ordering is a central issue in linguistic theory and there has been much research on the topic. The present volume contributes novel data from typologically diverse well-studied and lesser-studied languages as well as original analyses, and covers the major approaches in the field. Unlike previous research, most of the contributions in this collection consider more than one language. Discussed are, among other things, cases of affix ordering that pose problems to linguistic theory such as affix repetition, variable ordering, and interaction of prefixes and suffixes in terms of parasynthesis and mobile affixation. Novel examples of affix repetition and variable ordering are given, and the volume provides evidence that these phenomena are neither rare nor typical only of lesser-studied languages with unstable grammatical organization, as has been claimed in the literature so far. This book also offers an explicit discussion on the (non)existence of phonological affix ordering and a discussion on the emergence of affix ordering in child language, the first of its kind in the literature. Repetitive operations that are hard to explain in many theories are frequent in early child language and seem to serve as trainings for morphological (de)composition and affix stacking. Thus, the volume also raises the question about the general architecture of grammar and the nature and the side effects of our theoretical assumptions.

Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a ...
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Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a disproportionately low amount of research and funding is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. More regrettably, even less has been done to create a community of Africanists and concerned linguists who might work on rectifying this situation. This book puts some of Africa’s many endangered languages in the spotlight in the hope of reversing this trend. Both documentary and theoretical perspectives are taken with a view toward highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and exploring its consequences for research on and preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. The articles that comprise this volume collectively advocate nurturing synergistic partnerships between documentary and theoretical linguists researching endangered African languages in order to stimulate and enhance the depth, visibility, and impact of endangered African language research in the service of altering the landscape of scholarship and activism in this field.Less

Published in print: 2017-08-31

Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a disproportionately low amount of research and funding is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. More regrettably, even less has been done to create a community of Africanists and concerned linguists who might work on rectifying this situation. This book puts some of Africa’s many endangered languages in the spotlight in the hope of reversing this trend. Both documentary and theoretical perspectives are taken with a view toward highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and exploring its consequences for research on and preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. The articles that comprise this volume collectively advocate nurturing synergistic partnerships between documentary and theoretical linguists researching endangered African languages in order to stimulate and enhance the depth, visibility, and impact of endangered African language research in the service of altering the landscape of scholarship and activism in this field.

This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both ...
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This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is thereby focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such otherwise erroneously individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).Less

Paul Kockelman

Published in print: 2012-12-24

This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is thereby focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such otherwise erroneously individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).

This book explores the consequences of Noam Chomsky’s conjecture that head movement is not part of the narrow syntax, the computational system which relates the lexicon to the interfaces. Unlike ...
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This book explores the consequences of Noam Chomsky’s conjecture that head movement is not part of the narrow syntax, the computational system which relates the lexicon to the interfaces. Unlike other treatments of the subject that discard the concept entirely, it retains the core intuition behind head movement and examines the extent to which it can be reformulated and rethought. The book argues that the current conception of syntax must accommodate a species of head movement, although this operation differs somewhat in technical detail and in empirical coverage from earlier understandings of it. It proposes that head movement is part of the narrow syntax and that it applies where the goal of an Agree relation is defective, in a sense that it defines, contending that the theoretical status of head movement is very similar—in fact identical in various ways—to that of XP-movement. Thus head movement, like XP-movement, should be regarded as part of narrow syntax exactly to the extent that XP movement should be. If one aspect of minimalist theorizing is to eliminate unnecessary distinctions, then the book’s argument can be seen as eliminating the distinction between “heads” and “phrases” in relation to internal merge (and therefore reducing the distinctions currently made between internal and external merge).Less

Agreement and Head Movement : Clitics, Incorporation, and Defective Goals

Ian Roberts

Published in print: 2010-07-30

This book explores the consequences of Noam Chomsky’s conjecture that head movement is not part of the narrow syntax, the computational system which relates the lexicon to the interfaces. Unlike other treatments of the subject that discard the concept entirely, it retains the core intuition behind head movement and examines the extent to which it can be reformulated and rethought. The book argues that the current conception of syntax must accommodate a species of head movement, although this operation differs somewhat in technical detail and in empirical coverage from earlier understandings of it. It proposes that head movement is part of the narrow syntax and that it applies where the goal of an Agree relation is defective, in a sense that it defines, contending that the theoretical status of head movement is very similar—in fact identical in various ways—to that of XP-movement. Thus head movement, like XP-movement, should be regarded as part of narrow syntax exactly to the extent that XP movement should be. If one aspect of minimalist theorizing is to eliminate unnecessary distinctions, then the book’s argument can be seen as eliminating the distinction between “heads” and “phrases” in relation to internal merge (and therefore reducing the distinctions currently made between internal and external merge).

This monograph shows that the typically obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement in phi-features (phi-agreement) cannot be captured through “derivational time-bombs” – elements of the ...
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This monograph shows that the typically obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement in phi-features (phi-agreement) cannot be captured through “derivational time-bombs” – elements of the initial representation that cannot be part of a well-formed, end-of-the-derivation structure, and which are eliminated by the application of phi-agreement itself. This includes, but is not limited to, the ‘uninterpretable features’ of Chomsky 2000, 2001. Instead, it requires recourse to an operation – one whose invocation is obligatory, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. The book also discusses the implications of this conclusion for the analysis of dative intervention. This leads to a novel view of how case assignment interacts with phi-agreement, and furnishes an argument that both phi-agreement and so-called “morphological case” must be computed within the syntactic component proper. Finally, the author surveys other domains where the empirical state of affairs proves well-suited for the same operations-based logic: Object Shift, the Definiteness Effect, and long-distance wh-movement.This research is based on data from the Kichean branch of Mayan (primarily from Kaqchikel), as well as from Basque, Icelandic, French, and Zulu.Less

Agreement and Its Failures

Omer Preminger

Published in print: 2014-09-30

This monograph shows that the typically obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement in phi-features (phi-agreement) cannot be captured through “derivational time-bombs” – elements of the initial representation that cannot be part of a well-formed, end-of-the-derivation structure, and which are eliminated by the application of phi-agreement itself. This includes, but is not limited to, the ‘uninterpretable features’ of Chomsky 2000, 2001. Instead, it requires recourse to an operation – one whose invocation is obligatory, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. The book also discusses the implications of this conclusion for the analysis of dative intervention. This leads to a novel view of how case assignment interacts with phi-agreement, and furnishes an argument that both phi-agreement and so-called “morphological case” must be computed within the syntactic component proper. Finally, the author surveys other domains where the empirical state of affairs proves well-suited for the same operations-based logic: Object Shift, the Definiteness Effect, and long-distance wh-movement.This research is based on data from the Kichean branch of Mayan (primarily from Kaqchikel), as well as from Basque, Icelandic, French, and Zulu.

This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way ...
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This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. The book looks at language in an online and mobile world. It reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to the book, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. The book argues that our ability to decide who to talk to is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information and communication technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another — whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games — we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?Less

Always On : Language in an Online and Mobile World

Naomi S. Baron

Published in print: 2008-04-17

This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. The book looks at language in an online and mobile world. It reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to the book, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. The book argues that our ability to decide who to talk to is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information and communication technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another — whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games — we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?